Yeezus Review

Earlier today, I wrote my first review of a rap album on a friend's website, rockoranything.com. I had to keep condensing the review until it was two paragraphs. So I'd like to take this time now to share the original review in its entirety: 

Well, it’s finally happened. Kanye West has officially lost his mind—and perhaps even his throne as rap’s best modern producer. Yeezus marks the release of Mr. West’s sixth studio album and his first legitimately weak piece of work. Upon hearing Yeezus for the first time, my reaction was: “WHAT?! Is this really the same rapper slash producer who gave us such great albums as College Dropout, Graduation, and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (my personal favorite of the six)? On this one, everybody’s favorite rapper-to-hate is just trying too hard to be hated. As a whole, Yeezus has no musical direction, allowing Kanye West to become lost amidst electronic beats and weak wordplay.

Now before I go any further, let it be known that I’m a huge rap fan. I usually listen to songs while simultaneously following along with the lyrics, rather than just hear a bunch of words over a beat. I look at rappers (the good ones anyway) as wordsmiths. I love when a rapper is able to tell a compelling, vividly descriptive story over a great beat or use clever metaphors and complex lyrics to create rhyme patterns. But as I listened to the tracks on Yeezus and read along with the lyrics, I couldn’t help but wonder: sweet Yeezus, what is this man rambling on about? He really doesn’t talk about anything other than how great he is. Bragging and boasting about one’s personal achievements is a crucial part of rap. Every rapper claims to be the G.O.A.T.  (Greatest Of All Time), but this is just too much. But I’ll touch more on that later.

I actually saw Kanye perform a few weeks ago, as one of Governor Ball’s major headliners. He gave his audience a little preview of his forthcoming album and then told us all that he refuses to market it. Well Kanye, I don’t know if you realize this, but by saying that to tens of thousands of people and headlining in Governor’s Ball, you just did market your album. And don’t even get me started on your promotional video, which featured Keeping Up with the Kardashian’s Scott Disick horribly re-enacting Christian Bale’s epically insane performance in the film American Psycho.  But that’s all besides the point. We’re here to focus on the album.

Yeezus is 40 minutes and ten tracks worth of inflated egotism, rebelling against corporations, and really lame misogyny. The album opens up with something that sounds like Skrillex on a bad acid trip called On Sight. One of Kanye’s biggest strengths as a producer was taking samples from other songs and turning them into catchy choruses (think College Dropout’s Through the Wire or Watch the Throne’s Otis) On Sight makes use of this device as well; only here, the sample is smacked right into the middle of the song, making it feel awkward and out of place. After that, there are a handful of songs that just make you shake your head and wonder whether the best years of Kanye West are behind him. There’s Hold My Liquor, which sounds like a robot dying throughout the entire song, and Send It Up, which sort of makes you wish that you were that dying robot. The best and catchiest song on the album, by far, is Black Skinhead, which you may recognize from Scorcese’s The Wolf on Wall Street trailer (if you haven’t seen this yet, stop what you’re doing NOW and watch it).

But alas, Black Skinhead ends and on comes the most cringe-worthy song on the album: I Am a God. Now, we all know that Kanye West is an absurd, egotistical maniac. We knew it when he stood beside Mike Myers and stated on national television, “George Bush doesn’t like black people.” We knew it again when he felt like it was perfectly OK to walk onto the stage at the VMA’s, swipe the microphone out of Taylor Swift’s hands, and completely crap on her special moment. But at this point, Kanye West is bordering on a God complex (if you haven’t figured it out, Yeezus is a combination of ‘Ye, Kanye’s nickname, and Jesus). I mean, just look at the brilliancy that Kanye demonstrates in these few bars alone: “I am a god/even though I’m a man of god/My whole life in the hands of god/So y’all better quit playing with god.” Yes Kanye, you can rhyme the word “god” four times in a row. Thanks for bestowing us with your talents. He then has the audacity later on in the song to say “Everybody know you brought real rap back” and compare himself to Michael. Assumedly, this is either a reference to Michael Jordan or Michael Jackson. Either way Kanye, I’m sorry to say that you’re neither of them.

To see the review on the site, check out: 

http://rockoranything.com/?p=572

Point of View/Characterization

           

An author's voice is one of the most important aspects of writing. It's the author's ability to connect and engage the reader with his or her writing, to tell a great and entertaining story while also revealing themes and truths that the reader will find relatable. For instance, what you're reading now is MY voice--it's the way Matt Perrino writes, describes, and communicates to you as the reader. It's this concept of voice that distinguishes the great writers from the mediocre ones. 

I also believe that, to be one of the best, authors have to be able to give their protagonists a voice of their own. In other words, each protagonist should have a different way of articulating emotions, thoughts, actions, and goals; no two protagonists should sound the same. For example, let's say you and I walk into a building. We are in the same place, at the same time, seeing the same exact things. But your description of the setting and circumstances will be completely different than my own. No two people are the same; we are all unique, and even though we may share similar views, our perceptions of the world around us will always differ. The best writers will try to apply this mentality to their writing. Every protagonist will have their own voice, their own way of describing things, a specific way of communicating their story. There have been times where I've read different books by the same author and have walked away saying, "The protagonist of this book sounds exactly like the protagonist in that book." There's no distinction, nothing to differentiate one from the other. That's because the author is telling the story as HE or SHE would tell it; not necessarily the way the character would.  Some of the best writers out there will inhabit the mind of the character, will stop and ponder,  "How would this character tell this story? Would they use this word or that one? How would they describe this setting?" etc. 

 A few months ago, I was working on two novels simultaneously (on a side note, one of them is currently halfway done and has been sent to various people for opinions and critiques. If you'd like to be one of these people, let me know! I'm always eager for opinions). The protagonists in each story are similar. Tyler and Andrew are both in their twenties, male, and deeply disturbed. However, the voice of each character is, hopefully, different. To demonstrate this, I've taken a short scene from Tyler's story and altered it, writing it in a way that would fit Andrew's mentality. In this scene, the protagonist has just trespassed into the lobby of an abandoned mental asylum.

Tyler:

 I breathe in the asylum. Must, dirt, staleness. The smell of something that’s far past its expiration date. Our flashlights, along with the moonlight steaming through the shattered windows and gaping doorway, illuminate the world around us. The interior of the place looks even worse. As if the hospital has been rotting from the inside out for the past few decades. Thick cobwebs curtain the windows. Debris and dust cover the black-and-white tiled floor. The white walls are smudged with dirt, the paint chipped and peeling with decay like skin off a corpse. Their vandalized surfaces shout colorful obscenities at us. “Fuck you.” “Kiss my ass.” “Smoke weed everyday.”

            That last one I spray-painted myself.  

            Some walls flaunt holes the size of bodies, turning them into shortcuts into adjacent rooms. Smiling, I imagine a lunatic in a strait jacket running into these walls over and over again, until he comes bursting through the other side.

 The front desk sits directly across the entrance. A young assistant had probably once sat there, behind that semi-circle structure, smiling and nodding and saying to anyone who visited, “Hello, how may I help you?” while patients screamed with anguish and laughed maniacally in the background, as if the noises didn’t bother her at all. Now all that the desk holds is debris and dust and dirt. The little door that leads behind it is missing, torn off its hinges. I find it discarded in the waiting room, where the only things waiting are vacant, wooden chairs. This area must’ve been chaos in its prime. I envision families waiting with hungry anticipation and forlorn faces, as their disturbed relatives slump absent-mindedly in their seats or dash about the room like rabid animals. Those families probably used to pray to the lost crucifix outside that their demented kin would be strapped up and stowed away, far out of their lives and concern.

 Now here's that same scene, only described using Andrew's voice: 

            A musty, stale odor was there to greet us. If it weren’t for our flashlights and the moonlight shining through the nonexistent windows and entrance, the asylum would’ve been pitch-black. The lobby was even more decrepit than the hospital’s exterior. Cobwebs veiled the broken windows and every corner in the room. A thin film of dust shrouded the black-and-white tiled floor, with pieces of the asylum strewn about here and there. The walls, which had once been white, were smudged with dirt, and the paint was cracked and peeling. Their surfaces shouted obscenities at us, spray-painted in an array of different colors. “Fuck you.” “Kiss my ass.” “Smoke weed everyday.” Other walls had been vandalized in more drastic ways. They stood partially demolished, with holes the size of bodies acting like shortcuts into adjacent rooms. 

The front desk had a semi-circle shape and sat across from the main entrance. Its surface was covered with more debris, more dust. The little, swinging door that led behind it was missing, just like the door in the main entrance. After more wandering, I found it--the door to the front desk, that is--discarded in the waiting room. It was an eerie and foreboding sight. The area was full of wooden chairs, vacant and waiting for new patients. 

   

Hopefully, you can see the difference. Tyler tends to use short, fragmented thoughts, but every now and then, he'll whip out a long, complex description. He also has a vivid imagination and utilizes it to create scenarios that can be correlated to whatever he's experiencing at the moment. Tyler is also a very dark character and uses images of death to describe what he's seeing, i.e. comparing the peeling of paint to the skin peeling off of a corpse. He's an intelligent character and likes to use witty metaphors and similes whenever he can. And then there's Andrew. Andrew's voice is similar to my own, which makes him much easier to write than Tyler. He speaks in a simpler, more traditional style, without the use of fragments. He's more formal in his speech and doesn't possess the same imagination as Tyler. He's also not the type to write graffiti or vandalize a public place, even if it is abandoned (he's also not the type to trespass into an abandoned facility in the first place, but for the sake of this demonstration, I made an exception).  Hopefully, through this blog post, you can see the distinction between Tyler and Andrew--the differences between their thought processes, descriptive methods, and mindsets. 

Nightmare

I find that there are two kinds of nightmares: mild and extreme. With mild, you wake up from the nightmare but you're not too affected, not too shaky, and you drift off back to sleep almost immediately.  But with extreme--with extreme you wake up shaking, and once you realize that it was only a dream, you thank God for sparing you that terrible reality and allowing you to wake up in the safety of your bed. That's the kind of nightmare I experienced last night.

In this particular dream, a few of my friends (code names: DYSON, BIZNESS, and GIBBONS) and I had been apparently turned into 1930s gangsters. That part was actually sort of cool. But things took a horrifying turn when we were all captured by a rival gang. The four of us were taken to a warehouse, where we came face-to-face with the gang's ruthless leader. I can remember him distinctly. He was somewhat pudgy with a thick reddish brown beard, a bowler hat, and a brown pinstriped suit. His face isn't reminiscent of anyone I know, which can only mean that my mind created him for the purpose of this dream--a very strange thought in itself. We sat on a crappy, green sofa (a very hospitable way to treat your captives) while dozens of men in suits and fedora hats pointed their Tommy guns in our direction. We were all sweating, frightened for our lives.

"Are you really going to kill us right now?" asked Bizness, wringing his hands together nervously.

"Yes," said the gang leader with a smile. "But not right now."

Not right now. This maniac was going to make us wait for our deaths. Slow, psychological torture. We all started begging for our lives, like little kids who had just had their favorite toys taken away from them. I can remember Dyson asking if we could be given another week, just one more week PLEASE, to live. But the gang leader just grinned and shook his head.

After minutes of fruitless begging, we all fell quiet, eyes on the floor, hands trembling in our laps. At that moment, my friends had no choice but to accept the inevitable: we were all going to die.

But I just couldn't accept that. In my terror, I began to pace the room, wondering what I had done wrong to deserve such a terrible fate and then wondering what that terrible fate actually was. How would I die? Think about that. What an absurd question to ask yourself. It's a question that, despite the absurdity of this dream,  we as humans can actually understand and relate to. For some reason, I was terrified that this gang would bind me to a chair, throw me in a pit, and then bury me under pounds of cement, forcing the stuff down my throat. A gruesome, horrifying way to go.

But my mind was also being tormented by other thoughts. I kept telling myself, I'm 25. 25 years old, and I'm going to die. 25 years old, and I hadn't accomplished a damn thing. It was too young, there were still so many things that I had left to do. Since waking up, I've forgotten a lot of them, but here's some that I do remember: I wanted to get married. I wanted to have kids and be the world's greatest dad. I wanted to know what it was like to have your own family. And because of the circumstances, I would never be able to experience any of that. But the thing that upset me most was that I would never be published, that my talents and ideas were going to waste, that I had started half a dozen books and would never be able to complete them, that I had so many great ideas and stories, and now, I'd never be able to share them with anyone. This was the worst part of it all. Worse than being drowned in a pit of cement, worse than never getting married or having kids.

When I woke up from this nightmare, I couldn't believe that I was in my bed. The dream had felt so real, but my God, was I happy that it wasn't. But at the same time, it was also a reminder of my goals. So I took out my laptop and immediately began to write--because I refuse to let that dream become my reality. Now you're probably asking yourself, why the hell are you sharing this with me? Well, the answer is simple. Even though this was just an absurd dream, I believe that it can apply to our reality. Think about it for a second. If the next few hours were all that you had left to live, how would you perceive your life? Would you be happy and satisfied with it? Did you make the most of your talents, of the opportunities that came to you? Or would you have been like me, regretful and unfulfilled, wishing that you had just a little bit more time?

Grad School Is...

            Two weeks ago, I jovially celebrated my last day of grad school. Well, it wasn’t THE last day, unfortunately. Just the last day of my first year. I could sit here and tell you that I’m relieved and leave it at that. But that just wouldn’t be my style, so instead I’ll say this: Thank God. If I had even one more day of grad school, someone would’ve had to commit me to a mental hospital. School has CONSUMED my life over these last few months. In class, I was doing schoolwork. At my internships, I was doing schoolwork. On the weekends, I was doing schoolwork. At 3 in the morning, I was doing schoolwork. It was a pitiful, sad existence.  But now that’s all over (for now anyway), so I can finally relax, be somewhat of a human being, and enjoy my life for the first time since winter break. And it seems like I’m not alone. I can’t help but notice the copious amount of celebratory Facebook statuses that have been popping up on my Newsfeed lately; statuses expressing relief and gratitude over the end of grad/med/law school (though I haven’t seen any statuses celebrating the end of college—probably because those poor souls have realized that they’re about to get pummeled by the real world, where the only things waiting for them are bills and misery). So to celebrate the end of this hectic experience, I give you my (extreme) summary of what this last year of grad school has been like for me. I think many of you grad/med/law students, and even you full-time employees, will find this relatable and hopefully entertaining. I’ve titled this piece—are you prepared for this stroke of genius?—Grad School Is….

• ·      You know the wonderful feeling of completing one assignment, only to realize that you have about three more to finish, and they’re all due in the next few days? It’s like getting pummeled by an oncoming vehicle. You’re bleeding. You have a broken leg. Yeah, life kind of sucks right now, but you survived. You made it. And then, just when you’re about to stand up and walk to safety, a thirty car pile up suddenly, and miraculously, accumulates over your flattened body, crushing you under its immense weight.
• ·      You ever sit in class or in your office and glance at the stressed, high-strung faces around you? It’s like being stuck in a cage with overly aggressive monkeys that just got peed on (a South Park reference for any fans out there). These monkeys are pissed off, foaming from the mouth, desperate to escape. They want to pull out their hair while running and screaming through the streets. And they will tear off anyone’s face who irritates them.
• ·      You know those rare times where you actually did have some free time for yourself? You know, those short things called weekends? And then on Sunday night, you gasp and suddenly realize that you have to go to class or work tomorrow, making you sort of want to puke? It’s like walking down the boardwalk on a beautiful, sunny day. You’re with your girlfriend or boyfriend. You’re happy. Everything is going swimmingly. And then suddenly, a seagull takes a crap on your shoulder. And it’s like, “...really? Come on. Why did that just happen?” And then, just as you’re asking yourself this question, an entire flock of seagulls unexpectedly soars overhead and craps on you, covering you in feces and foul smells.
• ·      Remember finals week? That delightful feeling of being completely overwhelmed by everything you have to do, overwhelmed by everything that you don’t have time to do? It’s like being in a boxing ring with a rabid, muscular maniac (namely, Mike Tyson). You go down on the first punch, bleeding. But while you’re unconscious, the guy climbs on top of your limp body and keeps punching, even though the bell’s already rung several times. And as this guy’s fist is smashing into your face, just before everything fades to blackness, you ask yourself, “WHY THE HELL IS THIS HAPPENING AND WHEN WILL THIS MADNESS END?!”